You are sending us where?

On Friday we found out where our permanent site will be. Albania is the size of Maryland so when you think of it that way everything is generally close, but the roads and the transportation make it seem the size of Texas. Many of you have a general idea of the Peace Corps and what the average conditions are like, so you might be a little taken aback when you google, Sarande, Albania.

Sarande

When we tell Albanians where we are going they all say the same thing: Shume, Shume Buker! which is not the response others are getting about their sites, especially when they are up North. According to them, the North is Keq, bad. Despite the size of the country many Albanians do not travel that much so even though they have never been to the North they know they don't like it and therefore neither should we.

So we ended up in what many would say is the most beautiful city in Albania, it is where Albanians go to honeymoon and more and more Europeans come to vacation. I will be working at the Health Education and Promotion Unit while Lauren will be teaching at the new satellite University of Tirane, which was just started in 2006. We both have counterparts who we will work with and who will help us get settled into our roles. Mine does not speak any English, while Lauren will have a much easier time. The Peace Corps has not put anyone in this site for several years and Lauren and I both will be the first ones from our sectors. We already have a lot of people who want to come visit us, especially since there is daily ferry service from Sarande to the Island of Corfu, Greece. We will be going on a site visit some time in May and hopefully we will see our apartment as well as meet our counterparts and get a better idea of what we will be doing.

Other than the site announcements, things are going about the same. We continue to have Albanian language classes 6 days a week with some technical stuff thrown in, and these next two weeks we have to start putting our training to use. Lauren will have to teach several classes at the University and I have to give 3 health classes to local schools and at a health center. When that is over we will only have three weeks of training left.

This last Saturday we did have a cultural day, where we invited all of our host families from our town to come to a party. The Americans made American food and they made traditional Albanian food and we learned about about each other's cultures. Lauren and I made apple crisp which went over very well, especially with our American friends, while others made grilled cheese, french toast, pierogies, and jumbalia. None of us could find all the ingredients that we needed, but we all managed. For the most part our host families seemed to like our cooking, at least they did once they figured out what is was. Our host mom especially liked to watch me cook. A very uncommon site here. We also did some famous circle dancing, which as you might imagine involves dancing in a circle, over and over and over again. When we got home I helped our host mom turn over the soil around all the olive trees, she and our grandmother were very pleased, they kept telling me bravo, Ben, bravo!

Circle Dancing, Lauren with another PCV's host mom, and traditional Albanian food.